Bad Mood

By Lori R. Lopez

The cows and chickens have gone mad. So have the people of Dairy, Wisconsin. Three offbeat outcasts must come together to discover the town's dreadful secret in "Bad Mood", a quirky and humorous tale of science fiction and horror. Why is everyone else acting insane? What does it have to do with the corporation that seems to control the town? Will it spread to other cities, to the entire world? You won't know whether to laugh or scream . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lori R. Lopez
• Release date: Apr 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476065632

Lori R. Lopez

Lori R. Lopez wears many hats as an Author and Speculative Poet of Horror, Fantasy, Suspense, Humor and more. She illustrates her books and has written songs, while being an Activist for animals and children. Growing up, Lori roamed graveyards and conducted funerals for dead birds, squirrels, insects and spiders. Her offbeat books include The Dark Mister Snark, Leery Lane, An Ill Wind Blows, Darkverse: The Shadow Hours, Odds & Ends, and The Fairy Fly. In 2023 Lori won Third Place in the Long Category for the SFPA Poetry Contest for "Wake Unto Death". Her Poetry Collection Darkverse was nominated for an Elgin Award and a Finalist in the Kindle Book Awards. Her poems "Crop Circles" and "Nocturnal Embers" were nominated for the Rhysling Award in 2020, "Social Graces" and "The Whistle Stop" in 2021, "Biting Sarcasm" in 2022, "The Whippoorwill" and "If Houses Could Talk" in 2023. Poems "The Maw" and "creatures of the macabre" received Editor's Choice Awards among other honors. Stories and verse have appeared in The Sirens Call, The Horror Zine, Space & Time, Spectral Realms, JOURN-E, Weirdbook, Bewildering Stories, Dreams & Nightmares, Impspired, Altered Reality, Aphelion, and anthologies such as California Screamin' (the Foreword Poem), HWA Poetry Showcases II, III, V, VI, and IX, Journals Of Horror, Grey Matter Monsters, Dead Harvest, Fearful Fathoms I, Terror Train I and II, Trickster's Treats #3, Speculations III (Weird Poets Society), and In Darkness We Play. A member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and Lewis Carroll Society Of North America. Visit the Fairy Fly Entertainment Website Lori shares with her two talented sons, and their YouTube Channel @FairyFly. They have a Folk Band called The Fairyflies.

Book preview

Bad Mood

by Lori R. Lopez

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any

media without written permission from the author, except

brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles.

This is a work of fiction.

Copyright © 2012 by Lori R. Lopez

Front Cover Illustration by Lori R. Lopez

Smashwords Edition

WHAT WAS THAT? The blonde’s coronary muscle jumped to a state of hyper-drive, inspired by innocuous scrapes which might be anything from withered leaves rustling to a stark branch caressing a house.

Nothing, she discounted and resumed her clumping stiletto gait. Stupid heels! Could you be any more conspicuous?

It wasn’t just creepy sounds that unnerved her. A lot had changed between pursuing The Dream and returning home (not tall or sleek enough, a failure at twenty-plus) to Dairy, Wisconsin. The folks she’d known her entire life were acting peculiar.

Like pod people replaced by aliens, she thought as she walked familiar streets carting groceries in the premature twilight of autumn. She shifted the bag’s weight and crossed a deserted intersection, neglecting to look both ways.

It wasn’t that she was careless, or disrespectful of the law. It was something else. It was . . .

Weird, she assessed. The burg was practically a ghost town after sunset. Everyone afraid, cowering in bed. Mom, of course, denied there was anything amiss. Her father claimed terrorists were to blame. (Used to be Communists.) The strangest part was how, suddenly, every human resident of Dairy had turned vegetarian, like the city passed an ordinance. You could expect such behavior in California, but not The Midwest. She used to be the only vegan for miles.

I guess they’re right. You can’t go home again. She left, now everything was different. The place became Bizarreville, U.S.A.

Breath misting, bag crinkling, the jittery damsel halted to listen. Streets were quiet, deceptively stable, masking ulterior chaos. (She must’ve inherited her dad’s paranoia. Or the oddness was contagious, an imported virus.)

She resumed her solitary journey. She had never felt so alone as this minute.

Hours earlier, she tragically learned her high school sweetheart was dead, mutilated by a freak farm accident. That was all Craig’s mom, accoutered in square-dance togs with black and white polka-dots and a poofy skirt above the knees, would tell her before slamming the door.

She shouldn’t have waited to contact him. Sure, she felt silly — blabbing her ambitions when he was hurt from the decision to move.

California? Where does that leave me? Craig demanded.

Stuck in Dairy, she flippantly replied, on the family farm. I need to chase my fantasies! Since I was little I yearned to be in magazines modeling beautiful fashions. The latest styles! Dining in ritzy restaurants, walking red carpets, photographed on every continent. If I stay here with you, I’ll just grow old and die. I will never have lived.

She dismissed him, labeled him a redneck dirt-cropper prior to her Great Escape. But she thought he would always be there. He was her safety net. Her steady reliable ex-boyfriend. Devoted for life.

News of his death brought a backwash of memories. Holding his hand the first time, going to movies, strolling hallways at school. They were It, the most popular couple, Head-Cheerleader-slash-Homecoming-Queen and — President of Four-H.

Okay, he wasn’t the star athlete or fairytale prince she deserved. But Craig was handsome and treated her gallantly. There was a genuine niceness about him she didn’t meet in L.A. Regret pierced her core, knotted her stomach. Truth was, she missed him. After The Dream deflated and she wound up in Dairy (the reigning queen of homecomings), it seemed inevitable they would be together.

Windows were black in houses lining